Email the Author
You can use this page to email Damian Scoles about Practical PowerShell: Exchange Online.
About the Book
FREE UPDATES TIL THE END OF 2024
Some books claim to cover it all and cover it in depth, but they rarely succeed at both goals. This book is completely focused on PowerShell for Exchange Online, and PowerShell is covered in depth! Interested? Read on! Not only is the book focused on and deep dive into PowerShell for Exchange Online, but but all content is also practical, focused on real-world scenarios and knowledge gained through experience.
Updates Throughout the Year
Changes are natural in the world of cloud computing, and Exchange Online is no different. PowerShell that we use to manage it also changes over the course of weeks, months, and years. To help you deal with this, we update our book frequently with the latest topics, content, and PowerShell cmdlets. If the module for Exchange Online is updated to v4, we will cover those changes as well and if a connected service like Defender for Office changes, we'll cover that as well.
Subscribers can download the latest files, as they are updated, by using the link they are provided upon their purchase from Gumroad. For more information, see our FAQ. Full details of changes made to the book are in our change log.
Cloud Changes
The book is written and maintained by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) who specialize in Exchange Online and PowerShell and cover the topics expertly. We watch Microsoft for changes in PowerShell (monitoring cmdlets available) to their Roadmap and Message Center so you don't have to. We cover as many changes as we can in each update. As the book is always up to date, Exchange Online PowerShell is unlike any printed professional reference book you have used in the past.
Exchange Online is Microsoft’s flagship messaging product. This book is aimed at those who know some PowerShell or are looking for ways to make their scripts better as well as help you become more confident in managing Exchange Server with PowerShell.
What Will You Learn?
- Exchange Online v3 cmdlets to manage Exchange Online
- How to manage Exchange Online and customize your tenant
- How to create useful reports on your Exchange tenant
- How to manage mail(box) enabled objects with PowerShell
- How to manage mobile devices with PowerShell
- How to manage groups
- How to build and troubleshoot your own scripts
- How to perform email traces with PowerShell
- How to manage Public Folders with PowerShell
- How to manage security in Exchange Online with PowerShell
- PowerShell Best Practices
Chapters
Exchange Online PowerShell has the following Chapters in which we cover a range of subjects relating to PowerShell:
1. PowerShell Basics: Used as a launching platform for PowerShell, this Basics chapter introduces you to PowerShell topics to help new PowerShell users understand PowerShell in relation to Exchange Online. Coverage includes variables, arrays, hash tables, loops, and more. Examples are geared towards Exchange Online to help with relevancy.
2. Beyond the Basics: Continuing on your PowerShell journey, we now cover more advanced topics like formatting your output, understanding data handling, and other helpful tips for moving forward with PowerShell and Exchange Online.
3. Building Scripts: Now that we've covered the basics, this chapter is dedicated to building your own scripts for usage in management of Exchange Online. Truly focused on real-world examples and getting the most out of the power of PowerShell.
4. What's New: As things change, What's New is a sliding scale. We do our best to cover important topics in this chapter, some staying longer than others but always covering the constant change of Exchange Online PowerShell.
5. Connecting to Exchange Online PowerShell: A simple topic, that can be complicated by changes made by Microsoft. We cover connecting to Exchange Online with the various methods possible but also cover some of the nuances of the new v3 module.
6. Identity Management: Identity is the key in Microsoft 365 because, without it, users nor administrators will have access to Exchange Online. This chapter dives into how to handle identities in Exchange Online and hybrid identities synced from an on-premises Active Directory.
7. Exchange Online Configuration: A wide-ranging topic, Configuring Exchange Online with PowerShell is a large topic to cover. In this
8. Users: Without users, why have Exchange Online? We can also use PowerShell to manage a tenant's user base with coverage of OWA, quotas, out of office and more. Use this chapter as your way to explore what is possible in terms of user management.
9. Non-Users: With users there are also groups, distribution groups and more. PowerShell is also a great tool for managing these and items like Rooms, Room Lists, Microsoft 365 groups and so on.
10. Mail Flow: Like users, without mail, why have Exchange Online? The Mail Flow chapter covers domains, connectors, Postmasters, reporting, and much, much more.
11. Mail Flow - Compliance: Flowing mail is great, but sometimes it needs to be monitored. This compliance chapter covers DLP, message encryption and DLP in concerns of email.
12. Microsoft Defender / Purview Compliance: Users need protection, and Microsoft offers Defender and Purview to handle message hygiene. This chapter covers this at a high level as it is not technically part of Exchange Online but provides useful guidance for these technologies.
13. Permissions & Compliance: Security and access management are important to any service provided by an enterprise. PowerShell can be used to manage Roles and RBAC in Exchange Online. Additionally, impersonation, auditing, and other controls are also covered.
14. Migrations: Organizations often move from platform to platform on an occasional basis. With PowerShell, we can initiate, manage, and control entire migrations from Exchange and other platforms.
15. Mobile Devices: Exchange mailbox users typcially connect to their mailboxes with Outlook desktop, OWA and very certainly with Mobile Devices. We cover PowerShell and mobile device management solely within the Exchange Online PowerShell module / world in this chapter.
16. Public Folders: While Public Folders were supposed to go away, organizations have carried them with their migrations from on-premises services. Since Public Folders refuse to die, we've dedicated an entire chapter to it's management.
17. Reporting: PowerShell is great at gathering data and outputting large sets for consumption by management and administrators alike. In this chapter we cover how we can use PowerShell to create relvant Exchange Online reports with PowerShell.
18. Troubleshooting: Things break. We get red in PowerShell. Sometimes we get yellow. What does it all mean? In our Troubleshooting chapter we cover how to troubleshoot issues that you may experience when using PowerShell in Exchange Online. Expert tips and techniques are covered.
19. Encryption: This chapter takes a deep dive into Exchange Online encryption. Currently in beta form, it will fill a niche not covered by PowerShell books, including this one.
Exchange Online Checklist: When setting up Exchange Online, there are few true guides to get organizations from point A to point B in terms of configuration. Checklist items are provided to readers to assist in this process.
A. Best Practices: PowerShell has some hard and fast rules that we must observe; however, sometimes we near guard rails to guide us to better results. Best Practices focuses on generally agreed-upon methodologies and techniques for PowerShell scripting.
B. Miscellaneous: Some topics just don't fit in the rest of the book, and miscellaneous or menagerie are good terms for this chapter. Some are dedicated to PowerShell-specific concepts, while others are focused on Exchange PowerShell scenarios.
Sponsor Content: ScriptRunner has been gracious enough to sponsor this book and as such provides content in this chapter geared at educated readers on the benefits of their product. Their focus on PowerShell automation and ease of use is one of the reasons they were chosen, but their willingness to provide free tools beyond pay tools is key to this partnership. Look for ScriptRunner and the Author as they do webinars over the years.
Value
Simply put, with over 700 pages, written and maintained by experts, this book is of great value to IT Professionals. Any sort of training or consultants that would instead do the work for you, would cover many times the cost of this book.
Note: Exchange Online PowerShell is purchased as a subscription service.
About the Author
Damian Scoles has been a Microsoft MVP for the past eight years, specifically for Office Apps and Services and now Cloud and Datacenter Management. He is currently based out of the Chicago area and started out managing Exchange 5.5 and Windows NT. He has worked with Office 365 since BPOS and has experience with Azure AD, the Security and Compliance Center, and Exchange Online. Contributions to the community include helping on TechNet forums, creating PowerShell scripts that are located in the TechNet Gallery, writing detailed PowerShell / Office365 / Exchange blog articles (https://justaucguy.wordpress.com/), tweets (https://twitter.com/PPowerShell) and creating PowerShell videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClxHtLF0c_VAkjw5rzsV1Vg).